The Mental Health Benefits of Nature Exposure

With the vast range of therapeutic tools and techniques at our disposal, mental health practitioners often overlook a
key resource that has a multitude of mental, emotional and cognitive benefits, is generally accessible to most people,
and doesn't cost a thing: the great outdoors.

As humans become less connected with nature, we lose an essential health buffer. “There is mounting evidence that
contact with nature has significant positive impacts on mental health,” said Mardie Townsend, PhD, an honorary
professor at the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University in Australia.

“It is associated with reduced levels of stress — which also has huge ramifications for physical health, reduced levels
of depression and anxiety, increased resilience, increased engagement with learning for children and adolescents
otherwise disengaged from the education system, improved self-esteem and increased capacity to engage socially,”
she told Psychiatry Advisor.

Such effects have been found for not only being immersed in nature — like in the woods or a park — but also for
looking out the window at natural scenes and even simply looking at photos of them. One recent study,1 published in
2013 in Environmental Science & Technology, investigated the impact of different types of images on stress recovery.
Participants viewed slides of scenes from either nature or a built environment for 10 minutes, and then they
completed a task designed to induce mental stress.

The researchers found that participants who had viewed nature scenes had higher activity of the parasympathetic
nervous system — the “rest and digest” branch of the autonomic nervous system, which helps balance the activity of
the sympathetic, or “fight or flight,” branch — than the other participants. Newer research suggests that the more
awe-inspiring the scene, the better.

In a 2015 study,2 people who looked at scenes of awe-inspiring nature (grand mountain ranges and giant waterfalls,
for example) had an even greater increase in mood than those who viewed “mundane” nature scenes such as parks
and gardens. The awe-inspiring scenes also encouraged a more pro-social value orientation among participants.

These benefits “seems to be related to the visual structure of nature, which seems to be relaxing for our minds. The
mechanisms behind this are not yet clear, although my speculation is that nature contains a lot of repetitive structure,
which is ‘easy' on our minds,” said study co-author Yannick Joye, PhD, a researcher at the University of Groningen in
the Netherlands. The mood improvement was found to be mediated by the feelings of awe, which can “pull you away
from your daily petty concerns, and this could improve your mood — which is actually often determined by those
small concerns.”

The sounds of nature appear to have similar benefits, according to a 2013 study 3 showing that hearing recorded
sounds from nature had similar effects on recovery from a stressful situation as the study involving nature images. As
for time in the outdoors, researchers from Nippon Medical School in Japan compared the effects of walking through a
forest versus walking through a city. Their results 4 show that “forest bathing,” as they call it, not only led to decreased
stress hormones, but actually increased the natural killer cells of the immune system and the expression of anti-
cancer proteins.

These effects may be linked with an inborn need of humans to connect with nature. The biophilia hypothesis by
Wilson and Kellert claim that we “have an innate love for the natural world, universally felt by all, and resulting at least
in part from our genetic make-up and evolutionary history.”5 Our separation from nature has been relatively recent. In
the last 250 years, Townsend points out, and we have not adapted to this division.

She believes that the growing disconnection with our natural environment is exacerbating the escalating rates of
mental illness and that mental health professionals should be prescribing time in nature as often as possible, as well
as advocating on the policy level to help ensure access to green spaces for everyone.
“For this to happen, high quality parks, gardens and nature reserves need to be nearby, served by good public
transport, affordable, safe, attractive, with good signage and interpretive information, well managed and maintained,
and accessible to people with different physical needs,” she says. “If we are to prevent an upsurge in mental health
issues, especially among children, we need to re-engage humans with nature as a matter of urgency.”

Tori Rodriguez, MA, LPC, is a psychotherapist and freelance writer based in Atlanta.

References

Brown, DK, Barton, JL, Gladwell VF. Viewing Nature Scenes Positively Affects Recovery of
Autonomic Function Following Acute-Mental Stress. Environmental Science & Technology;
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Joye Y, Bolderdijk JW. An exploratory study into the effects of extraordinary nature on emotions,
mood, and prosociality. Frontiers in Psychology; 2015; 5: 1577.

Annerstedt M, Jönsson P, Wallergård M, et al. Inducing physiological stress recovery with

sounds of nature in a virtual reality forest--results from a pilot study. Physiology & Behavior;
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Li Q, Morimoto K, Kobayashi M, et al. Visiting a forest, but not a city, increases human natural
killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins. International Journal of Immunopathology
and Pharmacology; 2008; 21(1):117-27.

Bratman GN, Hamilton JP, Daily GC. The impacts of nature experience on human cognitive
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How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing?

Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies.
What you are seeing, hearing, experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how your
nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working.
The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn
elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing
environment reverses that.
And regardless of age or culture, humans find nature pleasing. In one study cited in the book Healing
Gardens, researchers found that more than two-thirds of people choose a natural setting to retreat to when
stressed.

Nature heals

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant
feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical
wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. It
may even reduce mortality, according to scientists such as public health researchers Stamatakis and Mitchell.
Research done in hospitals, offices, and schools has found that even a simple plant in a room can have a
significant impact on stress and anxiety.
Nature soothes

In addition, nature helps us cope with pain. Because we are genetically programmed to find trees, plants,
water, and other nature elements engrossing, we are absorbed by nature scenes and distracted from our
pain and discomfort.
This is nicely demonstrated in a now classic study of patients who underwent gallbladder surgery; half had a
view of trees and half had a view of a wall. According to the physician who conducted the study, Robert
Ulrich, the patients with the view of trees tolerated pain better, appeared to nurses to have fewer negative
effects, and spent less time in a hospital. More recent studies have shown similar results with scenes from
nature and plants in hospital rooms.

Nature restores
One of the most intriguing areas of current research is the impact of nature on general wellbeing. In one
study in Mind, 95% of those interviewed said their mood improved after spending time outside, changing
from depressed, stressed, and anxious to more calm and balanced. Other studies by Ulrich, Kim, and Cervinka
show that time in nature or scenes of nature are associated with a positive mood, and psychological
wellbeing, meaningfulness, and vitality.
Furthermore, time in nature or viewing nature scenes increases our ability to pay attention. Because humans
find nature inherently interesting, we can naturally focus on what we are experiencing out in nature. This also
provides a respite for our overactive minds, refreshing
In another interesting area, Andrea Taylor’s research on children with ADHD shows that time spent in nature
increases their attention span later.

Nature connects

According to a series of field studies conducted by Kuo and Coley at the Human-Environment Research Lab,
time spent in nature connects us to each other and the larger world. Another study at the University of
Illinois suggests that residents in Chicago public housing who had trees and green space around their building
reported knowing more people, having stronger feelings of unity with neighbors, being more concerned with
helping and supporting each other, and having stronger feelings of belonging than tenants in buildings
without trees. In addition to this greater sense of community, they had a reduced risk of street crime, lower
levels of violence and aggression between domestic partners, and a better capacity to cope with life’s
demands, especially the stresses of living in poverty.

This experience of connection may be explained by studies that used fMRI to measure brain activity. When
participants viewed nature scenes, the parts of the brain associated with empathy and love lit up, but when
they viewed urban scenes, the parts of the brain associated with fear and anxiety were activated. It appears
as though nature inspires feelings that connect us to each other and our environment.
Too much time in front of screens is deadly
“Nature deprivation,” a lack of time in the natural world, largely due to hours spent in front of TV or
computer screens, has been associated, unsurprisingly, with depression. More unexpected are studies by
Weinstein and others that associate screen time with loss of empathy and lack of altruism.
And the risks are even higher than depression and isolation. In a 2011 study published in theJournal of the
American College of Cardiology, time in front of a screen was associated with a higher risk of death, and that
was independent of physical activity!
References

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